Found in Translation
How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Translation. It’s everywhere we look, but seldom seen—until now. Found in Translation reveals the surprising and complex ways that translation shapes the world. Covering everything from holy books to hurricane warnings and poetry to peace treaties, Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche offer language lovers and pop culture fans alike an insider’s view of the ways in which translation spreads culture, fuels the global economy, prevents wars, and stops the outbreak of disease. Examples include how translation plays a key role at Google, Facebook, NASA, the United Nations, the Olympics, and more.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the introduction to this sympathetic appreciation of translators and their work, Kelly and Zetzsche boldly state that: "Translation affects every aspect of your life." Through anecdotes grouped into seven chapters, they demonstrate the crucial role that translation plays in health care, politics, business, religion, sports, technology, and even affairs of the heart. Though translators may not be the unsung heroes that the authors (translators themselves) frequently make them out to be, the stories collected here show how important their services are in a wide variety of applications from care of non-English-speaking patients in American hospitals to the accumulation of epidemiologic data from parochial communities across the globe, the translating of poetry ("like trying to play a piano sonata on a trombone"), and the correct interpretation of world leaders' statements that can have huge ramifications. The authors demonstrate the importance of understanding a culture as well as language in their accounts of simultaneous translation and attempts to preserve meaning when translations are themselves translated. Though serious in their objective, Kelly and Zetsche approach their topic with a wit that particularly comes through in accounts of translators' gaffes.
